  "Skindle's" in Poperinghe(The Salient, 1917) Shut the door, Jameson, shut the blasted door— The whole road's blocked as far as Elverdinghe. Four Bridge would hold you up an hour or more So don't go crashing up to-night, old thing— What weather! Hall-marked Flanders wind and rain! Come on inside. My groom will take your mare Round to the smithy on the Market Square. Let's have a dekko at the carte again. It's a posh lunch to-day, Suzanne's a vision, And the room's lousy with the old Division. Just now MacMartin stopped me on the street With news from Amiens. (And Marguerite Sends you her love. Oh, it's a bonzer war In cushy billets at the Poisson D'Or!) Mac is the same old swinger—he "mistook" His indicated route, and lost his bunch, Jumped on a tender down from Hazebrouck And blew in here with Willy Braid for lunch. They're in the bar with Tupper, back from Blighty, Capping his yarns of Baths and Aphrodite. Yes—I go back at dawn. We're on the ridge Over the Steenbeek by the corduroy bridge, Past the big pill-box with the double cleft To the main route stumps on the sky-line—then half-left. It's about an hour from the lorry-stand, unless You take the duckboards near the R.E. shaft. Quicker that way, of course, but badly strafed. You'll see a stranded tank there—that's the Mess. What is it like now? Smelly, Jim, and muddy— Under restraint, I call it fairly bloody. Nothing like Nieuport. Why, it seems an age— And yet the year is barely four months older, Since we got rounds up on the narrow-gauge And visited Belgian outposts in the polder. That was the life, old Jimmy! Now it's a black And gory business, slogging away by pack— Most of it salvage—while the five-nines crump Our half-drowned hairies staggering from the dump. (Well, here's luck, Jim! Gone dry? Why, I'd forgotten— Another brand, Suzanne! This sweet stuff's rotten.) There's a new mob to-night about the town— The whole back area's stiff with guns and troops, And Proven road's chock-full with "heavy groups" From six-inch up. They've put the tape-lines down And moved the forward dumps to Poelcapelle. Battle-headquarters' somewhere near the Bower, All day and night we're brassing off like hell— It's going to be a "Brock's" at zero hour! The Hun's not loafing though—he's getting windy, Listen! Even from here you can hear the shindy. Two nights ago we caught it hell-for-leather. The new relief had just gone on ahead, Leaving the altered signal "green-over-red." There was a little mist, and some soft weather— All quiet at nine o'clock. Hardly a sound. I took my gum-boots for a last look round. Nothing was doing beside the usual cracks Of long-range shrapnel on the duckboard tracks, And a crooning eight-inch, humping along a load Meant for the siding on the Pilkem road. Clusters of Very lights along the line Flickered and plunged. They helped my eyes to mark Our barrage-lines across the battery-arc. The pools were hoared with silver in the shine. Peaceful it was. I strolled and smoked and stared— There came a quickened rumble in the East, Down the battalion front the lights increased. Machine guns raved and stuttered. A rocket flared— Scarlet and golden-rain spouted and spread, Flares and skysigns and stars, and Green-over-red! Watch for it, Sentry! There again. Yes! Battery-Action! S.O.S.! Shadowy man after man leaps to a gun. Flash from the centre—five then flash as one. All round are flashes, lighting the livid Faces of straining gun-crews. Vicious and vivid Fire spirals and cataracts—knives, spikes Of fire stabbing the dark. Batters and strikes On the ears the unutterable, profound Debauchery of sound— The roar and clutter and whinny—sustained, obscene As if the dead beasts of the Pleistocene, Spawned of the essence Of ravaged earth's womb and her churned putrescence Were howling over the mud their lusts unclean. Then—well, when every hollow's a belching mass Of wrangling guns, guns bellowing to guns— You cannot tell a burst of ours from the Huns'— Suddenly through the cordite I smelt the gas. Down went the warning through the roar and screech— The spitting splinters ploughed us like a squall, Half-blinded gunners wrestled with the breech, Gas-helmeted, smoke-drenched—you know it all— Then the five-nines began. A salvo came, And Number Four went up in a gust of flame. I thought the whole of the line was smashed and finished— And then, through the reek of the fog and the dropping mire, From the right flank, steady and undiminished, Came the assuring crashes of section-fire, Timed and checked and re-laid. We groped and plunged To pull the stricken out. Still droned the steady Voice of the sergeants at the "set and ready." Number One, fire! The muzzle flamed and lunged. Number Two, fire! By God, those chaps are stunners! Search France, you'll find no better than my gunners. But some good men went West—some of the best. Horses or men, the best must always go— Jim, it's a mad-blind, lunatic, filthy show— Destiny's pitch-and-toss made manifest. I'm sick to death of it. And yet—and yet There's a hold somehow in this crazed eclipse Of the normal orient—a hold that grips— Nothing in life, I suppose, lacks credit and debt— The battered brain may hanker for surcease, But under the brain—its curious—there is peace. Hold on a bit. Last leave I met a fellow Who cornered me at the club and hiccupped crude Optimist zeal and tub-worn platitude— You know the sort. Slug-bellied, slushy, mellow. He winked, and wagged his tubby hands, and spouted— "Break through next time, old boy!" He knew, he knew— The final trap was laid—the Hun was outed— He'd had it straight from Jones at G.H.Q.— And—"Then we'll see you sportsmen back at Dover Covered with glory—sorry it's all over." So I let fly. I fed the blaze with faggots— Hinted that on the whole we liked the Hun— Roughed out a sketch of charnel-heaps and maggots— The side of war that isn't sport nor fun; Flung a few phrases chosen from the camps At itch-struck females dashing about in cars To pose in sketchy frills at snide bazaars— At fat old profiteers and statesmen's ramps— Oh, yes! I piled it on. He loathed the pill, And barged his way out, rosy round the gill. But was the swine half-right? It sounds like bliss To sleep serene o' nights without surmise Of S.O.S. lights screaming to the skies, Deep in the warmth of Blighty out of this— It sounds like bliss to forget the dug-out's reeking, The bitter fog in the eyes, the life on a thread, The crazed crescendo of the mortars seeking Half-callous living and the unheeding dead, And drowse in everlasting furloughs, under The placid roofs of peace-time. Well, I wonder! If we get through it—if the Immortals choose To grant a span again, when this be ended, Of ordered life, impenetrably fended By small restraints and sanctions and taboos— Shall the recovered cares and leisures grip The flabbier soul, or shall desire return Back to the dug-out's care-free comradeship And battle-time's magnificent unconcern For dim to-morrows? Shall we find, once more, Peace has its surfeits too as well as War? Not the drab shadows only we'll remember, But all the colour there was—the browns and blues Down the deep shaft of Flemish avenues; The swaying harvests gold-drenched with September; And frosty mornings in the Spring retreat When the scrap opened out, and it was good To choose a gun-park in the greening wheat And pitch a hidden tent in Holnon Wood— Jimmy, old son, it made the pulses dance To see those Devon daffodils in France! We shall recall the eager clank and jingle Of gun-teams on the pavÉ, moving South, The long off-saddle in the midday drouth, "Feed" in the cowslips by the wayside dingle; The journey's welcome end amid the cool Clutter of sun-warmed barns and straggling pines; The urgent fuss around the wagon-lines; Sweat-roughened horses drinking at the pool— And then the morning start, with head-chains ringing Swinging along at ease, the drivers' singing.... And moments better still. I thank the gods For one white, perfect hour at Conteville, With Bosches massing on the nearer hill, And open sights as near as makes no odds. Young Grant was with us then. The boy was daft, Blind to the snipers, yelling like the damned: Oh, good! Oh, bloody good! at every waft Of three-rounds-gunfire. Then left section jammed, And back the buzzers' private signal rolled: Sweat on it, chum! We've got the bastards cold! Such memories blaze their imprint under the traces Of darker records on the palimpsest. The blacker the time the deeper bites the zest Of sudden sunshine on the open spaces. There's a rough justice fingering the scale Where greater guerdons risk the longer price— Hazard your neck, and savour your cakes and ale— Seek Eden-fruit, and stake your Paradise. For though smooth road's good going, Jim—a kiss Snatched at the edge of Hell is tenfold bliss. One thing is sure. This crazy round-about Destroys the introspective attitude. Action uproots the dreamy Hamlet-mood, And blithely cuts the yellow throat of Doubt. Your job is clear before you, catalogued From dawn to dawn. You cannot miss the greens, Slice as you will—the fairway lies undogged By furtive may-be-sos and might-have-beens— Flank unto flank no hesitation ghosts The crude commands of Corps Direction-Posts. Leave it at that, then. On your toes, old son! Still with a grin for plagues we can't abolish— The super-fatted Staff; the wily Hun; The Army's tribal god of Spit-and-Polish. Blight seize 'em all! I'll wander now and borrow A couple of blankets from the R.T.O., You can doss down with me an hour or so. We'll trek together to the guns to-morrow. Finish your swipes, old Jimmy, while you can— Walk—March! The blooming ride! Bonne chance, Suzanne! L. M. HASTINGS Nobis cum PereantNobis cum pereant amorum Et dulcedines et decor, Tu nostrorum prÆteritorum, Anima mundi, sis memor. On the mind's lonely hill-top lying I saw man's life go by like a breath, And Love that longs to be love undying, Bowed with fear of the void of death. "If Time be master," I heard her weeping, "How shall I save the loves I bore? They are gone, they are gone beyond my keeping— Anima mundi, sis memor! "Soul of the World, thou seest them failing— Childhood's loveliness, child's delight— Lost as stars in the daylight paling, Trodden to earth as flowers in fight. Surely in these thou hast thy pleasure— Yea! they are thine and born therefor: Shall they not be with thy hid treasure?— Anima mundi, sis memor! "Only a moment we can fold them Here in the home whose life they are: Only a moment more behold them As in a picture, small and far. Oh, in the years when even this seeming Lightens the eyes of Love no more, Dream them still in thy timeless dreaming Anima mundi, sis memor!" HENRY NEWBOLT Beechwood.Hear me, O beeches! You That have with ageless anguish slowly risen From earth's still secret prison Into the ampler prison of aery blue. Your voice I hear, flowing the valleys through After the wind that tramples from the west. After the wind your boughs in new unrest Shake, and your voice—one voice uniting voices A thousand or a thousand thousand—flows Like the wind's moody; glad when he rejoices In swift-succeeding and diminishing blows, And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast; Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan-like noises Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves Until he rest, And silent too your easied bosom heaves. That high and noble wind is rootless nor From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on Childless as fatherless, wild, unconfined, So that men say, "As homeless as the wind!" Rising and falling and rising evermore With years like ticks, Æons as centuries gone; Only within impalpable ether bound And blindly with the green globe spinning round. He, noble wind, Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time, From high to low may fall, and low to high may climb, Andean peak to deep-caved southern sea, With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound, And echoes in his tossing quiver bound And loosed from height into immensity, Yet of his freedom tires, remaining free. —Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud, Uplifting skyey archipelagian isles Sunnier than ocean's, blue seas and white isles Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed— Still of his freedom tiring yet still free, Homelessly roaming between sky, earth and sea. But you, O beeches, even as men, have root Deep in apparent and substantial things— Earth, sun, air, water, and the chemic fruit Wise Time of these has made. What laughing Springs Your branches sprinkle young leaf-shadows o'er That wanting the leaf-shadows were no Springs Of seasonable sweet and freshness! nor If Summer of your murmur gathered not Increase of music as your leaves grow dense, Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings Of summer make full Summer, but the hot Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense. Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snow Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below; Nor Winter's snow were loveliness complete Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet. To hills how many has your tossed green given Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven; How many English hills enlarge their pride Of shape and solitude By beechwoods darkening the steepest side! I know a Mount—let there my longing brood Again, as oft my eyes—a Mount I know Where beeches stand arrested in the throe Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low Against the gods inhabiting the wood. Gods into trees did pass and disappear, Gigantic beeches opened and received, Then closing, body and huge members heaved With energy and agony and fear. See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here. See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear. Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes Have worn since—oh, with what desperate surprise! These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain Against alien triumph and the inward pain. Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed, Let the wind glide over you easily again. It is a dream you fight, a memory Of battle lost. And how should dreaming be Still a renewed agony? But O, when that wind comes up out of the west New-winged with Autumn from the distant sea And springs upon you, how should not dreaming be A remembered and renewing agony? Then are your breasts, O unleaved beeches, again Torn, and your thighs and arms with the old strain Stretched past endurance; and your groans I hear Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteer Driven clashing over; till even dreaming is Less of a present agony than this. Fall gentler sleep upon you now, while soft Airs circle swallow-like from hedge to croft Below your lowest naked-rooted troop. Let evening slowly droop Into the middle of your boughs and stoop Quiet breathing down to your scarce-quivering side And rest there satisfied. Yet sleep herself may wake And through your heavy unlit dome, O Mount of beeches, shake. Then shall your massy columns yield Again the company all day concealed.... Is it their shapes that sweep Serene within the ambit of the Moon Sentinel'd by shades slow-marching with moss-footed hours that creep From dusk of night to dusk of day—slow-marching, yet too soon Approaching morn? Are these their grave Remembering ghosts? ... Already your full-foliaged branches wave, And the thin failing hosts Into your secrecies are swift withdrawn Before the certain footsteps of the dawn. But you, O beeches, even as men have root Deep in apparent and substantial things. Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings, Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom. Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom, Levelled from the low opposing hill, and fold Your inmost conclave with a burning gold. ... Than those night-ghosts awhile more solid, men Pass within your sharp shade that makes an arctic night Of common light, And pause, swift measuring tree by tree; and then Paint their vivid mark, Ciphering fatality on each unwrinkled bark Across the sunken stain That every season's gathered streaming rain Has deepened to a darker grain. You of this fatal sign unconscious lift Your branches still, each tree her lofty tent; Still light and twilight drift Between, and lie in wan pools silver sprent. But comes a day, a step, a voice, and now The repeated stroke, the noosed and tethered bough, The sundered trunk upon the enormous wain Bound kinglike with chain over chain, New wounded and exposed with each old stain. And here small pools of doubtful light are lakes Shadowless and no more that rude bough-music wakes. So on men too the indifferent woodman, Time, Servant of unseen Master, nearing sets His unread symbol—or who reads forgets; And suns and seasons fall and climb, Leaves fall, snows fall, Spring flutters after Spring, A generation a generation begets. But comes a day—though dearly the tough roots cling To common earth, branches with branches sing— And that obscure sign's read, or swift misread, By the indifferent woodman or his slave Disease, night-wandered from a fever-dripping cave. No chain's then needed for no fearful king, But light earth-fall on foot and hand and head. Now, thick as stars leaves shake within the dome Of faintly-glinting dusking monochrome; And stars thick hung as leaves shake unseen in the round Of darkening blue: the heavenly branches wave without a sound, Only betrayed by fine vibration of thin air. Gleam now the nearer stars and ghosts of farther stars that bare, Trembling and gradual, brightness everywhere.... When leaves fall wildly and your beechen dome is thinned, Showered glittering down under the sudden wind; And when you, crowded stars, are shaken from your tree, In time's late season stripped, and each bough nakedly Rocks in those gleamless shallows of infinity; When star-fall follows leaf-fall, will long Winter pass away And new stars as new leaves dance through their hasty May? But as a leaf falls so falls weightless thought Eddying, and with a myriad dead leaves lies Bewildered, or in a little air awhile is caught Idly, then drops and dies. Look at the stars, the stars? But in this wood All I can understand is understood. Gentler than stars your beeches speak; I hear Syllables more simple and intimately clear To earth-taught sense, than the heaven-singing word Of that intemperate wisdom which the sky Shakes down upon each unregarding century, There lying like snow unstirred, Unmelting, on the loftiest peak Above our human and green valley ways. Lowlier and friendlier your beechen branches speak To men of mortal days With hearts too fond, too weak For solitude or converse with that starry race. Their shaken lights, Their lonely splendours and uncomprehended Dream-distance and long circlings 'mid the heights And deeps remotely neighboured and attended By spheres that spill their fire through these estranging nights:— Ah, were they less dismaying, or less splendid! But as one deaf and mute sees the lips shape And quiver as men talk, or marks the throat Of rising song that he can never hear, Though in the singer's eyes her joy may dimly peer, And song and word his hopeless sense escape— Sweet common word and lifted heavenly note— So, beneath that bright rain, While stars rise, soar, and stoop, Dazzled and dismayed I look and droop And, blinded, look again. "Return, return!" O beeches sing you then. I like a tree wave all my thoughts with you, As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when First in the windy east the dawn looks through Night's soon-dissolving bars. Return, return? But I have never strayed: Hush, thoughts, that for a moment played In that enchanted forest of the stars Where the mind grows numb. Return, return? Back, thoughts, from heights that freeze and deeps that burn, Where sight fails and song's dumb. And as, after long absence, a child stands In each familiar room And with fond hands Touches the table, casement, bed, Anon, each sleeping, half-forgotten toy; So I to your sharp light and friendly gloom Returning, with first pale leaves round me shed, Recover the old joy Since here the long-acquainted hill-path lies, Steeps I have clambered up, and spaces where The Mount opens her bosom to the air And all around gigantic beeches rise. JOHN FREEMAN Shobeensho(From the Irish Gaelic) For my Granddaughter Jenny O not as the wife of a churl would wrap you, In coarse country woollens so roughly to hap you; Between two sheets of the silk I'll lay you, A cradle of gold in the wind to sway you. I'd rock you to rest, my bright new-comer, One dreamy day in the height of summer, Under the eaves of whispering leaves, Drowsed by the drone of the wee bee-drummer. May a dream of delight steal into your slumber; Till evening makes way for the Starry Number, And with God's bright angels around to mind you, No finger of death I pray may find you! ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES Storm and StarsNaked night; black elms, pallid and streaming sky? Alone with the passion of the wind, In a hollow of stormy sound lost and alone am I, On beaten earth a lost, unmated mind, Marvelling at the stars, few, strange and bright, That all this dark assault of surging air, Wrenching the rooted wood, hunting the cloud of night, As if it would tear all and nothing spare, Leaves supreme in the height. Against what laws, what laws, what powers invisible, Sought not, yet always found, Cries this dumb passion, strains this wrestle of wild will, With tiger-leaps that seem to shake the ground? Is it the baffled, homeless, rebel wind's crying, Or storm from a profounder passion wrung? Ah, heart of man, is it you, the old powers defying, By far desires, by terrible beauty stung, Broken on laws unseen, in a starry world dying, Ignorant, tameless, young? LAURENCE BINYON |
|
